Robot Manipulation: Sensing and Adapting to the Real World

This workshop will explore new approaches to autonomous robot
manipulation that are specifically designed to handle the
uncertainties of real world applications. There is a resurgence of
interest in robot manipulation as researchers seek to push autonomous
manipulation out of controlled laboratory settings and into
applications such as domestic assistance, health care, and space
exploration. This workshop will investigate promising approaches that
address the challenges of autonomous manipulation within domains that
require the robot to sense the world and adapt to the unexpected.

This full-day workshop will consist of talks, discussions, a poster
session, and demos. It will conclude with a moderated discussion of
potential future applications for autonomous robot manipulation
focused on identifying tomorrow's driving applications and the
research required to enable these applications.

This workshop is a successor to the RSS 2005 Workshop on Humanoid
Manipulation and the RSS 2006 Workshop on Manipulation for Human
Environments.

Robotic Sensor Networks: Principles and Practice

Sensor network research has risen to prominence in recent years. The
breadth of research in the area is large. RSS 2007 will feature a one
day focused workshop on *robotic* sensor networks, namely sensor
networks which incorporate robotic mobility or articulation. Such
systems include, e.g., a networked multi-robot group, a network of
immobile computing and sensing nodes and mobile robot(s), a network of
immobile nodes each with computing and actuated sensing (allowing
e.g., each node to change the direction in which a sensor is pointed).
The design of such systems raises algorithmic and theoretical
challenges as well as challenges associated with the practicalities of
of conducting real deployments. This workshop will bring together
people interested in the algorithmic aspects, mathematical and
statistical foundations, and experimentalists who have fielded robotic
sensor networks in the context of specific applications. This synergy
between theory and practice is in line with the 'realistic visions'
RSS 2007 workshop theme.
Structure:

The workshop will be structured as a mix of short technical (though
informal) presentations, Q&A sessions, posters, demos, discussion
panels, and a concluding summary session. The exact schedule will be
formulated shortly.
Participation and Outcomes:

We encourage and actively seek participation by all interested members
of the robotic sensor network research community. As a participant you
may present a poster, give a short talk, or serve on a panel. As a
presenter we simply ask that you make material relevant to your
presentation (e.g., slides or poster or paper) available to the
organizers two weeks before the conference for distribution to the
workshop attendees. Please email the organizers with a short statement
of interest if would like to participate in the workshop or if you
have any questions. We are actively pursuing the possiblity of a
journal special issue on this topic based on the workshop.

This workshop will bring together researchers in biology, robotics and
computer science who study distributed physical systems: swarms,
hives, colonies, and multi-robot teams. The main goal is to enable
rigorous discussion of the common system constraints and algorithmic
solutions employed by natural and artificial swarms.

The first requirement is to identify similarities in our respective
high-level models of sensing, communication, processing, and mobility,
and discuss how these models constrain the distributed algorithms
employed by natural and artificial systems. What fundamental
mathematical theories underly both biological models of swarm behavior
and the design of robotic teams? What analytical tools are commonly
used in one field, which may be of benefit to the other? What specific
common constraints apply to the solutions found by nature and robot
engineers? When do roboticists wish they knew more biology? When do
biologists wish they knew more computer science or control theory? Are
there valid equivalences between natural and robotic distributed
systems at the algorithmic level? What tasks and applications for
swarm technology are most like those of their natural counterparts?
What is the most productive way to use "natural algorithms" in
distributed robotics?.

We welcome participants from the robotic fields of swarm robotics,
team robotics, modular robotics and other distributed robotic
systems. We welcome participation from biologists specializing in the
study of group behavior and organisms comprising such
groups. Prospective speakers will be asked to submit an extended
abstract of their presentation, with less emphasis on their current
research and a strong focus on algorithmic equivalences between
biological and robotic distributed systems. Previously published
research is acceptable if it fits the goals of the workshop. Accepted
abstracts will be made available in a digital archive.

In the last decade the world saw a noteworthy increase of natural
disasters. Events such as the earthquake in Kobe, the Asian Tsunami,
and hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, as well as man-made disasters,
such as terrorist attacks in Europe, Asia, and the US demonstrated the
weakness of today's society against these threats. Lessons learned
from these events are that efficient first response can reduce the
number of casualties significantly and facilitate recovery. However,
in the case of largely devastated areas the problem is aggravated by
the typically small number of first responders to search and rescue
survivors at the same time. Moreover, responders have to perform a
number of actions and coordinate with each other in an environment
where:

1) Communication is unreliable or noisy.
2) Structures such as collapsed buildings and hazardous areas are hard to access.
3) Information is incomplete or corrupted.

Hence, the success of Disasters mitigation (also known as emergency
response) depends strongly on the responders' ability to access
complex and hazardous structures. Moreover, the resilience of
communication structures and information fusion mechanisms will
determine how efficiently the responders coordinate and choose the
right coordinated course of action.

Research Goal

Against this background, a growing community has been researching
techniques to support emergency response using robotics and
multi-agent technology. In particular, researchers have been
developing partially or fully autonomous systems that can access
places humanly inaccessible, to develop robust probabilistic methods
for data integration in an either centralized or decentralized way,
and proposed efficient methods for mission planning and
coordination. For such systems to be useful for disaster mitigation,
these must perform their complex task on real-world data in real time
which is another important research challenge.

Within this context, the workshop invites research contributions that
relate to the design and implementation of multi-agent and robotic
systems that can be applied in emergency response scenarios. The goal
of the workshop is to provide a forum for the discussion of issues
arising in designing and implementing systems that process data from
disasters in real time, either directly embodied in the scenario or
from the perspective of an incident commander. The workshop also aims
to bring together researchers from the Robotics and Multi-Agent
Systems community who have been dealing with very related issues from
different perspectives.

Topics of Interest

Relevant topics include but are not limited to the following:

Robust integration of noisy data

Decentralized agent-based architectures

Teamwork, Coordination, and Planning Mechanisms in dynamic and uncertain real time environments

The landscape of robots in education has continued to change since the
2005 RSS Robotics Education Workshop. Over the last two years, there
has been a noticeable spike in interest in the use of robots in
education. For example: robots are discussed as platforms for
education at leading conferences and workshops such as SIGCSE and
AAAI; Universities are integrating robots into their classrooms;
Robot- centered competitions like FIRST, BotBall and RoboCup continue
to flourish. Industry is interested as well: iRobot recently announced
the Roomba Create; LEGO has updated their popular Mindstorm robot; And
Microsoft has funded two centers to explore the utility of robots for
computer science education.

What is the basis for this excitement? What is the evidence that
robots in the classroom advance education? The focus of this workshop
is to provide a venue for presentation of the research supporting (or
contradicting) the effectiveness of robots in education, and to help
shape future research in this area.

In particular, the workshop will explore how robots are used
differently as educational tools, in terms of hardware, software,
pedagogy, and assessment, in different disciplines (e.g. ME, EE, CE
and CS) and why certain types of robots may be more effective for
different purposes. As an example, many teachers take a
constructionist approach in which students build their own robots,
while others provide students with a working platform that they should
not change.

The workshop will also explore new curricula and robot platforms and
the research behind them. The objective of this workshop is to
re-evaluate the state of the art of robotics education and discuss how
to continue the broad adoption of tools and materials in the
classroom. As part of this discussion, we will explore what areas
remain unsolved, and which are immediately available for realistic
use. Moreover, we hope to create a community beyond the workshop for
future exchange of ideas.

Format

The full-day workshop will include: about 10 formal talks, discussion
panels, lightning talks (5 minute talks to promote posters), and a
poster/demo session in which participants will be invited to provide
hands-on demonstrations their robots and/or curricular materials. The
talks will focus on both demonstration and research results.

Interfaces, devices and methods for robots
adapted to Small and Medium Enterprises (CANCELLED)

With this session we expect to expose results from the SMErobotTM
European project, but also open some space to external contributions
from experts and submitted papers. The aim of the SMErobotTM project
is to develop devices, methods and robots specially adapted to Small
and Medium Enterprises needs. The workshop will also constitute an
evaluation of the current status of the project, exposing to an
international audience the sustainable results, test-beds and
achievements. The main focus will be on:

Devices for robot programming and HMI;

Plug-and-produce technologies and test-beds;

Parallel robot for SME force control applications developed in the project;

Low cost force torque sensor developed in the project;

Light-weight robot for SME applications;

High-level programming concepts;

Robots without fences.

All subjects will be introduced and the results obtained within the
project presented and explained. The focus is on achieved results, and
not on intended future developments. Consequently, the workshop is
very much application oriented using the developments obtained from
the SMErobot consortium which is composed by some of the leading
European companies and laboratories dedicated to robotics research and
development.

Tutorial: Microsoft Robotics Studio (MSRS)- A Technical Introduction

To further accelerate the growth of the emerging field of robotics,
Microsoft has created a new software development kit for the robotics
community - the Microsoft Robotics Studio (MSRS). MSRS provides a
software platform that enables development of a wide variety of
applications which can be used across a variety of hardware,
applicable to a wide audience of users.

The robotics session will provide both a high level overview of the
MSRS tools and runtime. The content is suited to both novices as well
as advanced robotics professionals.

Microsoft Robotics Studio delivers in three areas of software and all
will be described in this technical introduction:

A scalable, extensible concurrency and distributed runtime
architecture that can span a wide variety of hardware and devices. The
programming interface can be used to create applications to drive
robots using 8-bit or 16-bit processors (from a connected PC) as well
as 32-bit systems with multi-core processors; and devices from simple
touch sensors to laser distance finding devices.

A set of tools that make programming and debugging robot applications
scenarios easier. These include a high resolution visual simulation
environment that integrates 3D software physics supplied by the Ageia
Technologies PhysX engine. While Microsoft Robotics Studio can be used
with programming languages such as those included in Microsoft Visual
Studio and Microsoft Visual Studio Express, also included is a new
visual programming language that enables the creation of applications
using a simple drag-and-drop interface.

A set of useful technology libraries (services) to help developers
get started with writing robot applications, and tutorials which
illustrate the basics of how to get started in a variety of
programming languages.